Mongolian Rhapsody? Newly unearthed writing draft reveals original title for Queen hit

An early draft of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody to be auctioned at Sotheby’s reveals a different working title for the 1975 hit previously unknown to the band’s fans and scholars.

On one page of 15 pages of early drafts for the rock opera, songwriter Freddie Mercury wrote the words “Mongolian Rhapsody” near the top – but crossed out the first word and wrote “Bohemian” above it, the New York Times reports.

The draft is among a cache of Mercury’s belongings – including his furniture, stage costumes and drafts for other Queen hits such as Somebody to Love, We Are the Champions and Killer Queen – being sold by his friend and heir Mary Austin, who in April told the BBC that she was doing so in order to get her “affairs in order”.

The lyrics to Bohemian – or Mongolian – Rhapsody are written on stationery from the defunct airline British Midland, among Mercury’s doodles. In 1976, Mercury said that in the early stages of writing the song, “I almost rejected it, but then it grew.” The drafts are estimated to be worth £1.2m.

A number of Queen biographers told the New York Times that they were not previously aware of this working title.

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The Bohemian Rhapsody draft also reveals an early version of another verse. Rather than “Mama, just killed a man / Put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger, now he’s dead”, it goes:

Mama

There’s a war began

I’ve got to leave tonight

I’ve got to stand and fight

The song’s famous exclamations are all there – Galileo, fandango, Scaramouche and “thunderbolts and lightning” – alongside other words left on the cutting room floor: matador and Belladonna.

Gabriel Heaton, a specialist in Sotheby’s books and manuscripts department, noted that the various sheets of lyrics display “the extensive redrafting which was part of his songwriting process” and added: “The care and detail of these drafts is all the more remarkable when they relate to a man who so often downplayed his composition process. The pages bear witness to the many hours he put into perfecting his craft, as he experiments and plays with language, and hones and shapes the lyrics and harmonies for these songs which, for many of us, have simply always been there in our lives.”

Queen guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor declined to comment about the discovery.

Bohemian Rhapsody was the lead single from Queen’s fourth album, A Night at the Opera. It initially spent nine weeks at UK No 1, and a further five after Mercury’s death in 1991. In the US, it peaked at No 9 on its original release, but rose to No 2 in 1992 after being prominently featured in the film Wayne’s World.

It remains the UK’s third biggest-selling single of all time – certified four-times platinum – ranked at No 17 in Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 greatest songs of all time, and in 2018 gave the Bryan Singer-directed Mercury biopic its title.

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The costume for its video, a typically splendid two-piece catsuit and bolero combo in ivory satin designed by Wendy de Smet, is on sale with a guide price of £50,000-£70,000. De Smet has previously said: “He had ideas and we worked on them together … Freddie wanted to look like the god of Mercury.” A jacket and snake bangle also worn in the video are also up for auction.

A coffee-stained notebook of Mercury’s, believed to be his earliest collection of lyrics, has an estimated sale price of up to £180,000. It features designs for Queen’s logo alongside fragments of songs and an insight into what Queen were playing in their early days: setlists include Elvis Presley’s Jailhouse Rock and the Rolling Stones’ Stupid Girl.

A humble spiral-bound A4 notepad is set to fetch up to an estimated £300,000 – it contains 24 pages of draft lyrics for Queen’s seventh album Jazz, including songs such as Don’t Stop Me Now and Bicycle Race.

The draft for Somebody to Love meanwhile runs to 19 pages of the British Midland stationery: seven with lyrics, the remaining 12 dedicated to working out the song’s rich harmonies. It has an upper estimate of £200,000.

The lyrics and costumes form part of a six-auction series run by Sotheby’s in August and September, collecting the contents of Mercury’s London home, Garden Lodge in Kensington. Highlights from the sale will tour Sotheby’s locations in New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong and London.